The Abyss Stares Back
by SkItZoFrEaK
Summary: The Fade is the realm of possibilities, dreams and, of course, nightmares. But mortals were never meant to tread here, and the Inquisitor needs to get her people out before they unwittingly unleash the Nightmare on the real world...or themselves. A re-write of 'Here Lies the Abyss,' because I wanted more than green rocks and a handful of spiders. (background Cullen/Trevalyan)
1. Chapter 1

The Abyss Stares Back

_Notes:_ Sometimes I'm a little disappointed at the 'Here Lies The Abyss' quest. The Inquisitor gets thrown violently into the Fade, the place of dreams, of creativity, of living personifications of human values and traits, and possibly the source of all magic in Thedas. Everything and anything could be here. And it's….green. With some rocks. That's it, that's what you see. So I decided to try my hand at it. (And yes, I injected some Cullen/Trevalyan into the side lines, because that is my current playthrough and I sort of love it like fire).

_Goals:_ To instill a little more personality into the Fade, and horror into the realm of a powerful demon known as The Nightmare.

_Warnings:_ Spoilers for this quest, and some other aspects of DA: I. Also, this is a part of the Fade dominated by an ancient fear demon, so it will be a bit more dark (hopefully). Blood. Some swearing.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

\- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil", 1886.

1\. _(I got a girl in the war, man, I wonder what it is we've done)_

"Remember, Recruit, that battle is always chaos," the Knight-Lieutenant had told him once, years ago, "and the difference between victory and bloodbath is mostly in how well you impose order on that chaos." Fourteen-year old Knight-Recruit Cullen had been deeply impressed with this insight; thirty-year old Commander Cullen had since learned to value a little flexibility in his thinking.

Which was why he did not order Captain Rylan to march his platoon into the main courtyard of Adamant Fortress, though that had been a big part of his initial plan of attack. Adamant Fortress was as chaotic as it got - all around him, demons shrieked and snarled, soldiers in Inquisition colors shouted, bled, fell, and the clash of claw to metal was deafening. Only the Warden mages were eerily silent, throwing wave after wave of roaring monsters at Cullen's battle lines.

No, sticking to a rigid plan in this bloody mess would only get more of his people - of the Inquisition's forces - killed. So when the green glow of a Fade rift opened in the courtyard, Cullen threw back his head and bellowed across the seething mass of bodies, "Yusaris Company! Fall back to the western battlements! Yusaris to the west!"

A nearby lieutenant took up Cullen's cry, and then someone further down the line echoed it, until at last Cullen saw Rylan flash his shield in acknowledgment and his company retreated up the stairwells to the walls above on the western side of the fort.

Left, something huge and dark - Cullen dropped to one knee to duck the swipe of blood-slicked claws, then pushed himself swiftly to his feet, using the momentum of that push to slam his sword forward and up. The force drove his blade almost completely through the Shade that had tried to decapitate him. The creature shrieked and writhed, trying to rip itself from the blade, but Cullen leaned forward (careful, watch the swinging claws) and _twisted._ The thing screamed again, a horrible highpitched sound that reverberated through Cullen's skull and down his spine, but the cut was deep and tore the demon's connection to the waking world free. It arched it's lacerated spine back, and dissolved into wet, sickly green chunks at his feet.

The smell was hideous, but there was no time to dwell. Already Cullen could see more monsters coming through the Fade rift - he had not planned for a Fade rift, but plans didn't win battles, strategists did. "De Chevin, take Bloodletter Company to the eastern archway," he shouted, looking now to a nearby officer. "Shields on the lower levels, archers up top, draw the demons into the bottleneck and pick them off!"

"Commander!" The former chevalier managed a brief salute, black gore dripping from his own blade. Cullen had always thought the Orlesian accent sounded too cultured and soft for a battlefield, but there was nothing cultured about de Chevin's voice as he bellowed above the noise, "Bloodletter, to me! For honor! For glory! _For the Inquisitor_!" And there was nothing soft about the responding roar from the men and women of Bloodletter Company as they charged through the horde towards the east, screaming _For the Inquisitor! _as they scattered monsters and weirdly-silent Wardens in their wake.

Cullen's attention snapped back to his own position as ice spikes the size of his body suddenly exploded out of the ground to his right. Deftly, he side stepped and lashed out with his shield arm, shattering one of the spikes and sending razor-sharp shards of ice into the side of a flailing rage demon. The mage-ice melted instantly, doing little damage to the monster's fiery hide, but it was enough to distract it from raking its claws across a young soldier's face. The girl didn't hesitate to press her small advantage, and Cullen felt a small flare of pride as she lowered her head, raised her shield, and knocked the demon back - exactly as she'd been drilled.

But there was no time for commendations - "Wintersbreath Company, fall back and regroup, Stormbreak Company, to me!" Cullen shouted instead, raising his sword high and throwing the full power of his voice into the command. Wintersbreath had taken heavy loses and needed to regroup; Stormbreak was the most spread out of his platoons but the had the largest compliment of shield-bearers. He was going to need them. "Reform the line!" he yelled, and the remaning officers of Stormbreak echoed the command even as yet another wave of terror demons launched themselves at the bulk of Cullen's troops. Cullen grit his teeth and braced his shield. "Dual lines," he ordered, "Mirror shields!" Instantly, half of his shield warriors turned and slammed their backs against the other half, guarding both forward and back in a relatively neat line. Not a moment too soon, either, as at least three - no, four - of the Terrors erupted from the cobblestones behind Stormbreak's line.

"Glyphs!" Cullen ordered, bracing his back against a Lieutenant (Carson or Allina? No time to look, didn't matter, human, friendly, trained) and sliced the reaching claw of a Terror before it could grab one of his soldiers. Immediately, Stormbreak's mages threw out their hands from in between the on-guard warriors and brightly glowing fire and ice glyphs sprang into life in front of the raised shields, lined up in interconnecting patterns. Order in the chaos, Cullen thought briefly before his attention sharpened again.

"Holding pattern!" Cullen called. "We must keep the demons boxed in!"

And that was the key, wasn't it? Cullen remembered all too vividly the lessons he had learned at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, when the sky had ripped open and he had spent three days trying to contain the hordes of demons that had literally come raining down in the little valley below the destroyed mountaintop. He'd learned, for example, that imposing order on chaos started with keeping all the chaos from spreading in the first place.

"We need the Inquisitor!" someone nearby yelled desperately, "They'll never stop!"

Cullen opened his mouth to shout something back, later he would never be able to remember what, but from the opposite side someone else screamed, "Up there! She's up there! _With the archdemon!_"

Cullen's stomach gave a swift, sick twist. Against his own screaming instincts, he turned his head to look (he had to know she was still alive, _had to know_) and saw the vicious, hulking figure of the corrupted dragon stalking across a crumbling bridge. Several figures were backing away as it closed in, and he recognized the flash of silverite in Cassandra's shield, the blaze of Dorian's staff, and oh, Maker, the faint green glow of Jenna Trevalyan's marked hand as she held it out before her, as if warning the monstrous dragon off.

Something slammed into Cullen's shield, and he turned long enough to slam back, knocking the rage demon away. He stepped forward, blade raised to follow through and strike down the demon, but from the corner of his eye he saw lightening flash, and then a deafening crash as the bridge exploded into splintered stone and freefalling shapes, plunging into the gaping darkness below - no. _No._

"The bridge, the Inquisitor!" Someone screamed in his ear, in his heart, and then a flash of green and - "They're gone!"

_Gone_, she was gone, all of them gone, the falling bridge and tumbling bodies and maybe the last shreds of Cullen's heart too because there was nothing in the torchlit night but screams and the smell of blood.

His blade faltered, and he almost didn't hear the sudden cry of "Commander, look out!" before the rage demon's burning claws raked across his cheek, and then all Cullen saw was fire.

(Extremely Dorky Additional Note: the Companies are named for weapons: 'Yusaris = greatsword from DAO, Bloodletter = dagger from DA2, Winterbreath = shield and Stormbreak = staff from DAI)


	2. Chapter 2

_Notes:_ I don't typically play as mage (rogues for life!) But this particular quest felt more relevant to a mage, so that's where I went with it. Also, I thought that opening scene in the Fade where everyone's standing at weird angles was cool and interesting, and then...then it just because your average 'run in a straight line until boss battle' stuff, which made me sad.

_Goals:_ To keep canon-characters (like Cassandra) in canon, and to give Player Characters (Hawke, Inquisitor) a little more life and personal connections.

_Warnings:_ More cursing. Spoilers (just assume spoilers from here on out). And some glossing over of previous Dragon Age events/characters, because I'm assuming if you're reading DAI fanfic then you know who the hell the Grey Wardens are, etc.

2\. _(breathing in the chemicals_)

Jenna opened her eyes and immediately gagged.

It wasn't the helpless, terrifying sensation of falling that did her in, nor the sudden, gravity-flipping halt. It wasn't the insidious rotten-egg smell of sulpher, nor the greenish cast of the not-quite-natural light; it wasn't even the horrible sinking knowledge that she was once again lost in a place she was never meant to be. All of those things were contributing factors, of course (Maker, listen to her, '_contributing_ _factors_,' like this was just another field report she was composing in her head). No, what curdled her guts and sent her retching into the stinking filth of the damp ground was the sudden disorienting sight of five faces staring at her from five extremely different angles.

"Yeah," Varric's tired voice said from her left as she coughed and spat the last of the bile. "I know what you mean."

"Inquisitor!" Another voice, Cassandra, called, and Jenna squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about how that voice seemed to come from too-high above her. "Inquisitor, are you alright?"

"Andraste's ass, of course she is not alright," Dorian replied for her in an exasperated tone. "Look at where we are!"

"Oh, I'm looking," the Champion of Kirkwall called from somewhere to the left. "Not that it's helping. Tell you what, if this is the afterlife, the Chant of Light needs some serious revision."

Jenna took a deep breath (mistake - the sulpher smell burned her nose and throat) and pushed herself to her feet without opening her eyes. "Not dead," she croaked after a moment, grimacing at the taste of her vomit mixed with the foul air. "We're not dead," she managed in a more normal voice, and then forced herself to open her eyes.

"No," Warden Stroud agreed in a low, gruff voice from where he stood sideways on the greasy stone wall on her right. "We are in the Fade, no?"

"If this is the Fade," Dorian groused, "it's significantly less pleasant than I recall. Fewer palaces, less silk. And not a decent cup of wine in sight."

"Oh, fabulous," Varric muttered. The dwarf was clinging - no, not clinging, merely sitting - on a sharply angled jut of rock. From Jenna's point of view, he should have been sliding sideways to the dirt, but gravity seemed to have taken a bit of a vacation and he was slouching almost casually, rubbing a scratch on Bianca's stock and scowling vaguely at the marred wood. Not that Varric's impossible orientation was even close to the worst of it. Maker's breath, Hawke was standing upside down. "You know, the one advantage of being a dwarf has always been getting to avoid the really weird shit you people talk about seeing at night when you sleep."

"I thought the advantage was in the superior chest hair." Hawke's teasing voice was undercut by the tension in her face, but Jenna appreciated the effort anyway.

"Yes, but that goes without saying."

"Okay," Jenna called in as calm a manner as she could manage. "First, is anyone injured? I mean," she amended quickly, "More than we were before we...before_ here_."

"Well, I've got bruises on my bruises, a torn cloak hem, and a serious desire to set fire to that idiot Erimond's stupid little chin beard," Dorian replied first. "Oh, and I'm trapped in a rotting, nonsensical nightmare world that reeks worse than a tanner's pit," he added almost thoughtfully. "But other than that, fine over here."

"We must find a way out," Cassandra's voice was harder than usual, her fear giving the words more edges. "There must be a way. How do we get _out_?"

"Easy, Seeker," Varric grunted, hefting Bianca back over his shoulder. "I think question number one should be 'how do we all get on the same patch of dirt?' If this is really dirt," he added in a grumble.

"I could try to jump to you," Hawke called to him. "Be ready to catch me if I fuck it up, though."

"Always ready, Hawke," Varric replied instantly.

"Wait, wait," Jenna held up her glowing hand. "I've got an idea. Okay, brace yourselves." She closed her eyes again, called to the pulsing heat in her palm, and _pulled_. A burst of shouts of surprise and dismay, a series of thumps all around her, and then Jenna opened her eyes to see her companions sprawled with various levels of dignity around her. "A little _warning_, if you please," Dorian snapped from where he lay face down in the muck, glaring at her.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly, holding out her hand to help him up. Beside her, Stroud pulled Varric upright and reached to steady Cassandra.

Only Hawke appeared to have landed on her feet, although for some reason she'd drawn both her daggers and was crouched in battle-ready stance. She caught Jenna's eyes, glanced at her hands, and then shrugged, sliding the blades back into their sheathes with a practiced motion. "Habit," she explained.

"We must get back to Adamant," Cassandra said again, voice still edged with worry. "Mortals were never meant to walk in the Fade physically. And the army-"

"Is probably doing just fine, Seeker," Dorian snapped, cutting her off and reaching to touch Jenna's arm. Jenna saw him give Cassandra a significant look and small jerk of his head in her direction. She took another deep breath, fighting to ignore the smell, and forced her shoulders to relax. _Now is not to the time_, she told herself sternly. _Cullen is an experienced fighter and commander, he'll keep them alive._

_He'll be alive._

"There," Stroud declared, pointing upward with his sword. "That ruin over there looks like...a strange version of Adamant, does it not? And look, in the courtyard."

"The rift!" Hawke exclaimed. "We can get back through the rift, right? Back to the real Adamant."

"Then lets go, and swiftly," Jenna replied.

But before any of them could move, Cassandra gasped and cried out, "Most Holy!"

And there she was, stepping out slowly from behind a pillar of impossibly floating stone. Divine Justinia, or at least, Jenna amended, something that looked like her.

"Greetings, Inquisitor," the old woman said serenely. "Cassandra," she added in a gentler tone.

"What...what is this?" Jenna asked, stepping forward.

"Careful, probably a demon," Hawke cautioned, and Cassandra's face tightened in anger.

"I am no demon," the Divine (false-Divine, she had to remember that) replied without rancor. "I am here to help you."

"Sure you are," Hawke answered almost cheerfully. "All we have to do is give you whatever silly, useless bits of our souls we aren't currently using. And maybe a bite or two of our sanity, just for flavor."

"You will not be able to return through the rift," the spirit continued as if Hawke had not spoken, looking directly at Jenna. "The only reason any of you are still alive is your proximity to the mark on the Inquisitor's hand. And she cannot pass through. Not as she is."

"The mark," Jenna jumped on the words, fighting a sudden flare of desperation at the idea that someone might actually know something about the damn thing. "You know about the mark? What is it, what does it do?" _And what does it mean, _she thought but could not bring herself to say it out loud, _that it is on my hand and no other?_

"The Anchor is the needle that moves through the Veil," the Divine told her, standing now with her hands clasped piously before her. "And you, the thread that it pulls behind. But the Nightmare has warped that thread, and you cannot return through the fabric until you are made whole again."

A moment of silence, broken at last by Hawke's incredulous, "Um... _what_?"

"You do not recall what happened, when last you were here, no?" The Divine tilted her head to Jenna. She shook her head, and Justinia nodded knowingly. "The Nightmare took your memories," she explained patiently. "It took a piece of you, and you cannot leave it's stronghold now until you reclaim what you have lost."

"How in the Void is she to do that?" Dorian burst out. "And more importantly, what the blazes is this Nightmare you keep mentioning?"

"Really, Sparkler?" Varric shifted his weight impatiently. "You really want to ask that question?"

"The Nightmare is a fear demon, one of the oldest and most powerful of it's kind. It dwells here, and lately it has grown fat on the terror that Corypheus now feeds it. Soon, he will bring it through from this realm and into the world of the living, and it's power will have no equal."

"...Oh," Dorian deflated a little.

"Yeah," Varric grunted. "Exactly."

"Wait," Jenna stared in horror. "The demon that Clarel and the Wardens were trying to bring through. That was the...the Nightmare? And it answers to Corypheus?"

"Yes." The Divine's expression remained serene, though her eyes looked a little sad now.

Jenna swallowed. "And it's here, nearby?"

"Yes."

"Well...shit."

"It stands at the end of a dark path," the spirit said slowly, unclasping her hands and stepping lightly back. "Behind many doors. You must take care, Inquisitor, for some of those doors will be false, and the path is not safe. Remember, the Nightmare has been shaping this place to suit it's nature for a long time."

"Wait, Most Holy!" Cassandra cried, stepping forward with one hand half-raised, but the Divine (the spirit, the...whatever it really was) raised a hand in turn to halt her.

"I will follow you as I can," she said soothingly. "But I am no match for the Nightmare's power, and I must hide myself from it lest I be devoured. You will not have that ability, and must face it as best you can. I have faith in you, my friend, and always have," she told Cassandra in a gentle, motherly voice. "Now you must find that faith in yourself."

She stepped back again, and vanished into the dripping stone pillars without another word.

"I think...this way," Hawke said tentatively, pointing to the nearest pillar. Jenna was startled to see a giant set of imposing double doors were now carved into the slick stone - or perhaps had always been there. The doors were covered in carvings that seemed to flicker and change the longer she looked, but the images all looked vaguely familiar, things she'd seen in half-forgotten dreams. Cautiously, Stroud reached out and tapped the heavy-looking doors with a gloved hand, and moved quickly back when they swung open as lightly and silently as a breeze. Behind them, they could see only a heavy grey fog.

"Well, this seems like a grand idea," Dorian sneered, and privately Jenna agreed with the sentiment.

Still, Hawke was right. In every other direction, there was nothing but a yawning wasteland of jagged stone and green-tinted mud. Only the doors looked like anything remotely resembling a path. _Some of those doors will be false, _a soft voice murmured in her head, but Jenna shook it off. Every moment they spent in the Fade could mean life or death for the people she had left back in reality. Might already have meant death for some...no, no, this was not the time. She had to focus, had to get these people back to where they belonged, and had to do it quickly.

"With me, then," she ordered. "Stay close."

"A dwarf in the bloody Fade," Varric murmured as he fell in step behind her. "I can't even make this shit up."

The doors slammed shut behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

_Notes:_ And here's where I go off the rails from the original quest. I don't plan to drag the whole thing out to uber-lengths, but I thought the Fade could use maybe just a little more variety. So here we go.

_Goals:_ To make the Inquisitor's recovery of memory a little more significant than just "kill green thing, hold A, ten second cut scene."

_Warnings:_ Same as before.

3\. Through a Mirror

(_what you touch you don't feel / do not know what you steal_)

She'd been expecting a cave, or a tunnel perhaps. Somewhere dark and ominous, anyway. What she had not expected was a brightly lit, glittering hallway that appeared to be carved of enormous faceted diamonds.

No, not diamonds, she realized as the fog slowly faded and the light flooded the area around them. Mirrors. They covered every surface, from the walls to the few pillars lining the middle of the hall; even the floor gleamed silver. The mirrors were in all shapes and sizes, and some even had frames, wedged in against the silvery glass. Two or three of the mirrors were full length, and one of those had a frame made of molded gold that looked like great tree roots growing up and around it. Some of the mirrors seemed to flicker with shapes that Jenna wasn't sure were mere reflections, and she instinctively pulled away from those.

"You know, this reminds me rather of the Archon's palace," Dorian mused, stepping a little closer to peer at the walls. "Although I believe even he managed to limit the gaudiness to one room, and not every conceivable surface in the place."

"What the-" Cassandra stepped sharply back from the mirror she had been examining. "That is not - these cannot be proper mirrors!" She sputtered. "The images are...it's not real," she finished in a lower voice.

"Andraste's flaming ass!" Varric agreed, moving as far from the reflective surfaces as he could. "You're not kidding, Seeker."

Jenna blinked at her closest reflection, wondering for a moment what they saw that was so terrible, and then her eyes traveled up to look at her own face-

"Shit!"

She wrenched herself back, teeth bared and eyes wide with horror. The Jenna Trevalyan in the mirror did not gasp, though, simply stared out of the gleaming surface with an untroubled expression, and above those calm eyes burned the blazing sun brand of a Chantry Tranquil.

Someone was tugging at her arm, and it took Jenna a moment to register Dorian's voice, murmuring her name in a soothing tone. "Jenna, my friend, it's alright, it's not real. There's nothing untoward on your face, darling, I promise I'd tell you if there were." He was trying for a light tone, but Jenna could hear the strain in it. She gulped hard, and allowed him to pull her hand away from her forehead. In the mirror, another image had appeared leaning close to Jenna's own expressionless face. Dorian, only in the mirror he wore the hooded robes and silver sigil of a Venatori, and his eyes glinted with an unnatural red. "Not real," he repeated in her ear, and Jenna resolutely turned her head away.

"Now that's just rude," Hawke said a bit too loudly behind them, glaring at something in another mirror. She turned sharply on her heel and stomped towards the Inquisitor's party, glowering, and Jenna only caught the vague image of a young woman that resembled Hawke in the mirror behind her. The girl smiled sadly at Jenna, her eyes sunken, her veins standing out black and gnarled against pale skin, but then Hawke must have stomped too far out of range because the mirror went blank. "Load of bullshit," Hawke announced brusquely to them all when she came up even with the party. "So let's get a move on."

They moved on, but the Tranquil Jenna paced evenly at the real Jenna's side, and other images flickered in and out around her, catching her eye and drawing her gaze against her will. Some faces she recognized immediately, and some were so warped that she caught herself staring, trying to see the men and women she knew underneath. Leliana, covered in gore and staring out with hollowed, dead eyes. Iron Bull, holding the limp, mangled body of his lieutenant as the Storm Coast's perpetual rain lashed his tired face. Cullen, red crystals spiking out from his right eye, shredding through the lid as he raised his Templar shield -

Jenna jerked her head away. It wasn't real. She would not look. _She would not look._

But the hallway began to narrow, and soon Jenna found herself marching almost shoulder to shoulder with Cassandra, who stared forward with a locked jaw and narrow eyes. "No offense to you lot," Hawke's voice broke through the grim silence, "but this is starting to get a bit too cosy for my tastes."

"Oh come on, Hawke, you know you've missed the chance to cuddle up with your favorite dwarf," Varric replied with a weak stab at humor.

"Of course," Hawke replied gamely, "but I'd prefer we all get a bit of a wash first, old friend. Rolling around in the mud back there didn't do you any favors, I'm afraid."

Jenna turned her head to remark that she didn't think Adamant had been too much help in the stench department, either, but froze with her mouth hanging open as her eyes met unwittingly with her reflection again.

But it wasn't a Tranquil who stared out at her. It wasn't even her, but the Divine again, only this time suspended slightly off the ground with her arms outstretched. Her back was arched in a torturous curve, her face drawn and tight with pain as red bands of bloody magic seethed against the skin of her wrists and neck. Her soft grey eyes, wild with fear and pain, met Jenna's in the mirror.

"Help me," she gasped in a small, terrified voice.

"No," Cassandra growled at Jenna's side. "Most Holy!"

"It's not real, Seeker, remember?" Varric said a trifle shakily. "Just some weird Fade nightma-"

"The hour of our triumph is at hand," a deep voice boomed from the mirror, choking off Varric's words. "Keep the sacrifice still."

Suddenly, the mirrors on both sides of the Divine's image lit up, and several armor-clad shapes solidified. They all stood facing the Divine, however, eyes blank, hands outstretched, bound to her by those boiling red cords of magic. Holding her in place.

"Wardens," Hawke spat.

"Controlled by Corypheus," Stroud retorted sharply. "Look."

Behind the Divine, another, larger shape formed from the dark shadows and loomed closer. Red lyrium crystals grew from his blackened, sagging skin, peeling it back in places to reveal the bone, folding it over in others to hang like ancient curtains around his giant frame. Dorian gagged, and both Cassandra and Stroud instinctively raised their shields, but the image of Corypheus did not turn to look at them. Instead, he stretched out a long, gnarled arm, revealing a carved orb clutched in his black talons.

"It begins," he intoned softly. The orb flared green and the Divine threw back her head and screamed.

"No!" Cassandra shouted again, raising her sword, but before any of them could act, Jenna heard herself shout.

"_What's going on here?"_

Dimly, she was aware of the others turning to stare at her, aware that her staff was still strapped to her back and her hair was stiff with sweat and blood, and that her left hand pulsed and throbbed with a distant kind of pain. But that was all peripheral, what mattered was the scene before her. This creature was torturing the Divine! "How dare you!" she shouted again, stepping forward. She should scream, call for guards, this temple was full of Templars after all, they would stop whatever horrible spell this was. But before she could draw breath again, the...creature turned and met her eyes. Jenna's throat choked on her breath, and she stumbled back a step from the mere force of the thing's gaze.

"We have an intruder," it said almost casually. "Kill her."

Jenna tensed, hands raising to defend herself, but she had surrendered her staff at the door with all the rest of the Conclave, she had nothing but a few weak barrier spells and already two of the strange mages - Wardens, what in the Void were Grey Wardens doing here? - were readying spells too powerful for her to block.

And then the Divine lunged against her magical bonds, using the Wardens' distraction to pull one arm free of the binding spell to strike wildly at the monster before her. Her bleeding hand smacked into the green orb, and it spun out of the monster's talons, flying across the room and bouncing against the tiled floor.

"Run!" The old woman screamed in a hoarse voice.

"No!" the monster bellowed over her, lunging after the orb.

The Wardens faltered, the orb spun across the floor, and without thinking, Jenna leaned down and grabbed-

Pain lanced through her hand, and then her arm was on fire - no, it was claws, sharp black talons that ripped into her flesh and tore it from the bone, shredding their vicious way up her arm and towards her body. Jenna threw back her head and howled as she was ripped into small, bloody pieces, screaming and screaming until the fire consumed her and she fell into darkness-

Abruptly, the pain stopped, and the sudden relief dropped Jenna hard to her hands and knees. Her...hands, both still whole, not burned to ash or torn to shreds, though one pulsed green in time with her pounding heart.

"Jenna, please, breathe, it's over, it was just a memory, Jenna, I need you to start breathing, or so help me I will slap you, woman!"

Jenna drew in a shuddery breath and forced her head up to meet Dorian's panicked look. "Don't," she croaked, forcing her lips to pull into what she knew was an unconvincing smile. "I'm too...too pretty to slap."

He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and snapped, "Nonsense, everyone knows I am the only one around here with that distinct honor."

"Wait, we're not allowed to slap the pretty ones?" Hawke asked. "Too bad, Isabela says that's part of the fun."

"What..." Jenna turned to look at the rest of her party, and caught sight of Cassandra. The Seeker was standing with her back to them, facing the mirror that had shown the Divine. Only now the mirror was shattered, revealing a darkened hallway behind it, and Cassandra's shoulders were shaking slightly.

"She broke the mirror when it looked like Corypheus was about to leap out and grab you," Varric explained quietly. "I mean, he probably wasn't," the dwarf shook his head in disbelief. "I think. It was all just an image to the rest of us. But you seemed pretty convinced that this was all really happening. So I guess it was the right idea."

"At least it explained a few things," Jenna tried to look on the bright side. "Now I remember how I got the Anchor. It wasn't Andraste," she added in a quieter voice, and was surprised to feel a sudden surge of disappointment at the words. Funny, the whole time she'd been arguing with everyone, telling them that she wasn't holy, that the very idea of a common Circle mage would be divinely sent as a holy vessel was laughable. And yet to find out for certain that she had been right all along...was not as triumphant as she'd thought it would be.

"The Maker never chose me," she said slowly, testing the words. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Or perhaps," the Divine said serenely from the mirror, "you were exactly where the Maker needed you to be."

Cassandra's shoulders jerked once, and Jenna saw her hand tighten on her sword hilt, but she did not turn to look at the image. "This path," she said instead. "It leads out of the mirrors."

"Perhaps we should take it," Stroud spoke up from where he had been quietly observing the whole thing. "This hallway appears to be shrinking anyway. At this rate we will likely find ourselves at a dead end."

"Anything to get out of the creepy mirrors," Hawke murmured, and Varric nodded firmly.

"Can you walk, Inquisitor?" Cassandra asked in that same tight voice, still not turning to look anywhere but into the darkened hallway before them.

"Yes," Jenna replied, taking Dorian's offered arm gratefully and pulling herself up. "Wait, does this mean I'm, um, whole again? Now that I remember what happened at the Conclave?"

But even as she asked, she saw the grave look on the Divine's mirrored face. "_Do_ you remember?" the image asked kindly, and Jenna sighed.

"No, I suppose there are still gaps," she answered, and with a nod to Dorian, pulled herself upright and stepped forward to walk past the rigid Seeker. "Cassandra," she said quietly. "I need you. Are you with me?"

The Seeker stared at her with blank, unrecognizing eyes for another heartbeat, then blinked and scowled. "Yes," she said shortly. "I am with you."


	4. Chapter 4

4\. Nothing to Fear (But)

(_all you have is your fire_

_and the place you need to reach_)

"I just want everyone to know, for the record," Hawke declared, "that I blame Varric for this."

Varric snorted in disgust. "That's not fair, Hawke. You hate the Deep Roads as much as I do. This could be your fault."

"Oh, make no mistake, I definitely hate the Deep Roads," Hawke acknowledged, stepping around a shattered dwarven statue and glaring at the decrepit carved walls. "But not with quite the same burning passion as you do."

"The Deep Roads," Dorian mused, attempting futilely to smooth his tangled hair into it's normal combed coif. "Is this what they look like? Hm, explains why it's all so..." he gestured vaguely around, hunting for a suitable word.

"Dwarfy?" Hawke supplied helpfully.

"I was going to go with _oppressive_, but yes, I suppose that works too."

"You know, I'm pretty sure we could reasonably blame the Grey Warden for this one," Varric jabbed a thumb back at Stroud. "This is sort of his thing, after all."

"I do not recognize these ruins," Stroud answered almost absently, scrutinizing a nearby pillar carved with squarish, runic shapes. "Although I suppose every darkspawn-infested hole looks the same after awhile."

"Oh good, darkspawn," Jenna muttered darkly. "Just what this adventure was missing."

"Except they wouldn't be darkspawn, not really," Dorian said thoughtfully. "Just demons who resembled them. And that's...not really better, is it?" He added, glancing at Varric's face.

"No, Sparkler, it really isn't."

"Speaking of Not Better," Hawke cut in. "What the flaming void are _those_ things?" She pointed to the nearest statue, except when Jenna looked closer she saw with horror that it was not a statue at all. It was a dwarf. Or a thing that resembled one, anyway. Vaguely. The dwarf-thing stood very still in the flickering shadows of the lyrium-powered lamps lining the walls of the tunnel, but she could still see it's chest rise and fall, and occasionally the beard on it's chin would stir in some tiny, unfelt breeze. Down the hall, she could see more shrouded but distinct dwarven figures standing like guards at regular intervals, hands clasped behind their backs, chests glinting with burnished armor.

"Um, excuse us?" Jenna asked tentatively, stepping forward a little towards the nearest dwarf. "Are you-"

The dwarf turned it's head suddenly to look at her, only it couldn't be looking at her because it _had no eyes_. Jenna swore and jumped back, her shoulder clipping Cassandra's shield as she did. No eyes, no nose, nothing but smooth blank skin interrupted only by the thick black beard on it's chin. And yet, the...the 'face' continued to follow Jenna's movements as she stepped a little to the side to stand next to Cassandra rather than directly in her way.

"Monstrous," Cassandra murmured, and Jenna wanted to shrink behind the Seeker's imposing shield and hide from the eyeless stare.

"Aw, shit," Varric threw up his hands as down the hallway, every dwarf suddenly turned a blank faceless head towards them. "This just keeps getting better, doesn't it?"

"At least they're not attacking," Hawke pointed out in a weak voice.

"Shut _up_," Dorian hissed.

Varric also gave her a severe side-eye. "Seriously, Hawke? Have I taught you nothing of dramatic irony?"

Hawke grimaced. "Yeah, sorry, that was a stupid thing to say."

Stroud walked resolutely forward, pointedly ignoring the way the dwarves turned their faceless heads to follow his movements as he passed. "Let us not provoke them, then. Come. We must reach the rift and return to Adamant before it is all too late."

"You mean before the Wardens wipe out the Inquisition with their demon army and then march on the rest of Thedas under Corypheus's banner," Hawke said snidely, eyeing the eerie dwarves and fingering her daggers nervously.

"That is a bold judgement coming from the woman who tore apart an entire city and then ran off into the hills to hide from the consequences," Stroud snapped back, slowing to turn and face her. But Jenna grabbed his arm and hauled him farther down the hallway, gritting her teeth against the sensation of the eyeless stares.

"Not. Here," she ground out in a low voice.

Stroud started to speak, but before she could register his words, the dwarves against the walls suddenly seemed to spring to life. As one, they stepped forward and turned their blank faces towards the far end of the corridor.

"That can't be good," Varric commented, Bianca already primed and aiming in that direction.

A moment later, they heard it - a cacophony of high-pitched squealing interspersed with frantic clicking that grew louder and louder as it neared. And then out of the darkness, a cluster of giant spiders came swarming towards them. The hazy blue of Dorian's barrier snapped into place around them, and Jenna slammed her staff down, sending a storm of chain lightening into the heart of the cluster.

Spiders, she thought frantically, _why is it always spiders_? The glittering lightening blew a handful of the creatures backwards, but a dozen more were already climbing over the twitching carapaces of their fellows. Jenna stepped back, readying a swift blast of force magic to clear the field around her. Cassandra arrived first, shield up and sword already flashing through the first of the vicious little creatures.

But to Jenna's horror, instead of turning to cut again, Cassandra shuddered and stumbled in shock, her sword arm dropping as if she had suddenly lost all strength in it. "Dorian, barrier on Cassandra!" Jenna barked, sweeping an arm and sending a sharp blast of icy wind into the enroaching swarm, knocking them away from her friend and chilling their repulsive bodies. "Stroud, cover forward! Hawke, watch the left flank. Cassandra,_ snap out of it!"_

"Look out!" Stroud yelled, rushing forward and raising his shield to block one of the spiders from throwing itself at Cassandra's exposed face. Jenna's fear for Cassandra overwhelmed her fear of the dripping fangs and hairy, raking claws of the spiders, and she lunged forward to stab her staff blade down into the back of a flanking spider.

The blade pinned the creature to the stone floor like a bug to a researcher's cork board, but before Jenna could yank it free, her vision suddenly went dark and in the back of her head she heard a voice - a child's voice, high and reedy with panic - screaming, _No, no, please not the dark, not the dark, Momma please I want a candle, please please please-_

Jenna jerked her staff up and away from the spider, and immediately her eyes cleared and the voice vanished. "Maker preserve me," she gasped, but another spider was already launching itself at her, and she blasted it back with a fireball. The creature fell back, writhing as the flames consumed it's hairy body -

\- her lungs were choking, the water in her mouth tasted of salt and she thrashed wildly but the surface was too far away and she was going to _drown, _she was going to _die_, can't breathe _can't_ _breathe_ -

\- and then the spider collapsed into a little pile of ash and Jenna was gulping in air against the lingering phantom pain in her lungs. Around her, the battle was tapering off, Hawke yanking her daggers from the belly of a twitching spider and Cassandra standing defiantly on top of a small pile of hideous corpses with her lips pulled into an almost derisive sneer.

Nearby, Varric was slowly climbing to his feet, staring at his arms as if he wasn't quite sure what they were. "Hey, Hawke, do me a favor," he said in a strained voice. "Tell me if I'm all burnt to a crisp. And don't spare my feelings, I really need to know."

"You're not burnt at all," Hawke told him slowly, brow furrowed in confusion. "Um, I'm not missing any major chunks of flesh, am I?"

"Nope, definitely all there," Varric answered in a similar tone. "As much as you were ever all there, anyway."

"What," Stroud said in a low voice, "just happened? I swear to the Maker I thought for a moment I had turned into a..." he trailed off, shaking his head and looking down on the spider corpses now littering the ground. "It seemed to happen every time I killed one of these."

"Fears," Jenna realized. "These things, spiders, whatever," she gestured around at the corpses. "I'm going to guess they are the personification of the more personal kinds of fears. I thought I was drowning, when I killed one. And another made me afraid of the dark. But it stopped once they died."

"Personal fears," Hawke echoed. "And of course they look like giant spiders."

"Spiders?" Dorian asked. "They look like spiders to you? Interesting. That's...not what I see at all."

"What do - you know what, never mind," Hawke waved an impatient hand. "We have enough problems without all our fears bleeding into each other."

"Can we move on, please? The creepies are dead, but those dwarves are really starting to grind my nerves," Varric glared at their silent audience, all of which had returned to their almost motionless stances against the walls. The dwarf next to him stared eyelessly back, and Varric shook his head and stepped as far away as he could, deliberately turning his head. "Inquisitor?" he called. "You ready?"

But Jenna was not listening, frowning down at the rapidly decomposing spider corpses. "Something about these things..." she started, then trailed off thoughtfully. "I swear I've seen them before."

"If they look like something you fear, then that makes sense," Cassandra said.

"I don't just mean they look like spiders," Jenna shook her head, ignoring Hawke's stage whisper to Varric ("Hah! She sees spiders too. I _told _you everyone hates spiders.") and kneeling down to touch a hesitant finger to one of the corpses. The hairy demon crumbled under her touch, and then she was running, running, lungs laboring to pull in the sulphurous air, a heavy weight over her shoulders, dragging her back.

Behind her, the chittering, clicking mass of pincers, black glittery eyes, and hairy legs (sweet Maker, so many legs, too many, revolting, odious, _scuttling_) was gaining on her.

"They are coming," the Divine panted against her side, arm slung across Jenna's shoulders as she stumbled to keep up.

"Keep running," Jenna commanded, legs churning against the clinging mud. Up ahead rose a shattered staircase, and at the top, a beckoning green glow. There was nothing else around, nothing but broken stone, knee deep mud, and the boiling swarm of hungry spiders closing in behind-

"Run!" Jenna threw herself forward, but the Divine's weight had vanished, and her legs were not actually mired in sucking mud, so the movement overbalanced her and she went crashing into the stone floor. Or nearly crashed, because someone caught her around the waist and hauled her upright before her face could connect with the hard stone.

"Easy, Inquisitor," Stroud said. "It's over. The vision is over."

"You were with her in the Fade," Cassandra said from her other side, reaching to pull her from Stroud's grasp and steady her. "You were trying to carry Divine Justinia towards the Breach."

Jenna glanced up and met Cassandra's hard gaze, and saw the grief and the gratitude mixed together behind the fierce anger. "Yes," she said quietly, and then she squeaked in a truly embarrassing way as the Seeker suddenly crushed her into a rib-creaking hug.

Almost instantly Cassandra shoved Jenna back, scowled at Varric's smirk, and turned on her heel. "Do not dare," she snarled, but Varric merely spread his hands out before him in silent surrender. He could be an ass where the Seeker was concerned, but at least he had some sense of self-preservation.


End file.
